Rise
by gote
Summary: This is what survivors do. They keep on going. She just has to keep moving. If she can keep moving, maybe she can trick herself into believing she still has a life to live, and not just a heart that won't stop beating. [AU] -written for The Quidditch League Fanfiction Competion, Round Six


**_prompt: _**_Genre - Dystopian_

**_competition: _**_The Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition, Round Six_

* * *

**Rise**

This is what survivors do. They keep on going. She just has to keep moving. If she can keep moving, maybe she can trick herself into believing she still has a life to live, and not just a heart that won't stop beating.

She's sneaking into supermarkets, stealing food from shelves long abandoned. She's stepping over corpses and fighting dogs for scraps of dignity. The world's an empty husk, and they're robbing it for all that they can, but the barren wasteland's hardly kind, and the enemy is everywhere.

The ending of the story was worse than anything they could have imagined. Back then they still had hope, back then they still had promise, back then they were still able to believe. This isn't a nightmare, this is a hell. Ginny wonders, sometimes, if she isn't already dead.

She may be a little, on the inside.

It feels like forever ago that the world burnt down around her, but sometimes the pain of it hits her like it only happened yesterday.

Sometimes isn't the horrors, past or present, that are what's worst; it's the memory of happiness past. That's what hits you like a rock to the head, slams into your chest like a curse from an enemy wand, digs itself deep inside of you like a worm, spreads through you like a virus; the knowledge that it's never coming back.

Usually, though, it's easier to believe that all life _before_ was just a dream. You'd think, then, that they'd be more fond of sleeping, that they'd fall into its welcoming embrace with delight, clinging to hopes of slipping back into better times.

But you can't choose the images that come rushing to the forefront of your mind.

Sometimes she feels like all that's left of her is the fight she can't let die. Sometimes it feels detached from her. It screams and kicks and curses, but she's somewhere far away, watching with something close to indifference.

Sometimes she thinks she's waiting for an excuse to die.

The world ended, but somehow she didn't, and all that's left is the worst of everything. She'll tear down what she can before she leaves, if she'll ever get to leave. Each day it grows harder to believe there has ever been or ever will be anything but this.

She hopes when -or if- the time does come, that they'll be waiting for her. She hopes they'll be proud.

_I never gave up_, she'd say. She has to picture this scene, repeat the words, every time she's tempted to. She hates how often that is.

Bent over maps and plans and lists of rations, out of nowhere, Ginny remembers when they used to play Quidditch. For the first time since the light left Luna's steady blue eyes a whole year ago she feels the prick of tears.

She remembers her brothers, and apple trees. She remembers Christmas, and birthdays, and their old fat cat. She remembers how Errol could never fly, and how Pig would never stop.

She's forgotten what her own face looks like, and the way lips can turn up in a smile.

Sometimes she's simply frozen. She doesn't move for a day, or two, or three.

Dennis Creevey tucks her under a ragged blanket. At some point, when they weren't looking, he became a man. Seamus Finnegan carries her dinner with his one remaining arm.

She flashes back to Padma Patil screaming, screaming, _screaming, _and she glances over to her now, takes in her distant stare.

Seamus waits until Ginny stops shaking, before feeding her himself.

Do they remember that she lost the other half of her too?

Teenage Ginny wouldn't have believed in a life after true love.

Teenage Ginny feels like someone Adult Ginny made up when racked with fever, sweating through sheets, kicking Hannah Abbott and her well meaning, comfort-intending hands...

This ragtag bunch is all that's left of them. All the good in the world, is how she's come to think of them.

_There is good in the world. There is good in the world. There is good in the world._

She repeats it over and over again, until it no longer holds meaning. But a person needs something to cling on to, no matter how frail. It's starting to fray, it threatens to snap.

Sometimes she'll look at Draco, and remind herself he could be a spy, but she pushes it aside because she couldn't bear it to be true.

He tells her that she's a fighter, and that he believes in her. He says it so matter of fact, like there's no ounce of doubt to its truth.

Her only weakness is that they all are her everything.

She keeps falling in love with broken things. They're the only type left, plus they match how she feels on the inside.

Sometimes, when her eyes flutter almost closed, she thinks she sees green eyes. She hates how quickly she jerks awake, how eagerly she looks for him. It always takes the sting of disappointment to remember.

Every loss they suffer, every screaming night, every moment of every day, she thinks how much better it'd have been, if he had lived, and she had died.

Ginny wonders if she's reached that line, where instead of killing being something you do, it becomes who you are.

They don't know what world they're fighting for, not any more. There isn't anything left of what they stood up, so long ago, to defend. They've been losing since they began.

They're shadows stalking the Earth's corpse, when it's safe, and sometimes when it's not. Seeking, searching, fighting. They tell each other stories.

_Once upon a time, the birds used to sing._

Angelina Johnston plays this old guitar, and never sheds a tear. They're waiting for the day she calls it, that this day will be the day they die.

More and more they talk of a final stand.

_We'll go down, take as many of them with us as we can._

It sounds better than stale biscuits for breakfast, lunch, and tea.

But it's yet to happen.

Maybe they're too shocked by the miracle that somehow, through it all, they're growing older, and that day after day, the sun never fails to rise.


End file.
